Creating a long term project
This week, I had been hoping to start organising my next photographic project. Since April after passing my Master Photographers Association Licentiate panel, I have been considering what to do for my Associate panel.
The MPA has 3 levels of qualification excellence: Licentiate, Associate and Fellowship. Now these are not traditional education qualifications, they are much more business qualifications. The Licentiate shows that you are capable of taking professional level photos, Associate indicates that you are an exceptionally good photographer, whilst Fellowship would make you one of the top photographers in your field.
When I passed my Licentiate, I scored 225 out of 240, which is a very good pass. Judging was done by 3 panel of judges, judged in 4 areas, with each image able to achieve a maximum of 12 points.
Now, the panel also comes with a supporting statement that explains how created the image, this includes, concept, lighting, posing and editing. This the judges read and take into consideration when awarding marks.
Getting your qualifications is kind of a big thing. Back in 2018, I did my qualification with the SWPP but I really didn’t take it serious enough and just put in various images of varying quality and received a pass. With the MPA, I took it much more seriously and really worked to get the qualification and was pretty sure I would get a good mark after.
When you pass you then get a sheet breaking down the marks and then some short comments from the judges.
Panel feedback
General observations from the judges:
A very interesting & varied panel with a theatrical feel. A little attention to tight cropping on some images would have helped.
This panel was accompanied with a very concise Working Profile. Strong theatrical style coming through, most images would benefit from being less tightly cropped
Lovely panel, found it hard to remove any marks, a little bit of cropping and a few lighting bits
Now, it is important to say that the judges are not in contact with each other when they do the judging and each comes to their own conclusion, but the comments, were generally very similar.
The main area I lost points was with my cropping, which is very common with photographers and something that is relatively easy to fix.
The second comment that stands out was how theatrical my work feels. Which makes sense because of my background and the kind of work I do.
This second comment, has very much struck a chord with me. It is no secret that I have been moving in this direction for some time and the comments on re-enforced this, so when moving forward with my Associate panel, I should continue, with this theme.
The MPA has several different areas, where you can achieve awards. My portrait panel was judged under the Portrait category
“A panel of twenty images to be made up of the following : Five Prints are required from two portrait sessions showing a variety of work during each session. Ten additional images from any other session. It is preferred that the panel should contain images from 10 separate portrait sittings.”
Now, the Portrait category is the most common of categories but I didn’t feel that it really followed where I wanted to go as a photographer, which is much more down a fine art theatrical line of photography.
This comes under a different category, Illustrative photography, which incorporates a fine art and stock photography. Now it is important to say that these images, much be available to buy.
This has become very popular with some photographers but is not an easy option, in many ways it is a much harder option, which normally takes a lot of organisation, technical skill.
So move forward several months.
After passing my qualification, I very surprisingly won the MPA South East Photographer of the Year. Lock down was very hard for many but for me, it gave me the change to try a variety of different things and pursue different ideas, with the win re-enforcing that I was going in the right direction.
It was either June or July, that I came up with the initial concept for my project. It actually came from some homework, set by the MPA during lockdown. The subject for the home work was ‘Tools’, with my mind instantly going to horror films, such as Driller Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead, Tucker and Dale Vs Evil, Saw Psycho and the list can go on and on.
So I decided to create my own image based on this, using a tool from my garden shed. This image, did well in the homework and I then decided to enter it into the regionals and was the image I won South East Creative Photographer of the Year for.
It was after winning, that I thought I could take this further. What if I did a project on horror films, creating images inspired from these films. This soon got much wider, why don’t I include images portraits of famous, actors, directors, make up and effects people from the horror genre. I could create a exhibition and maybe even a book from the project. My imagination ran rife but this came at the expense of reality. A project like this isn’t cheap and with Covid-19 money hasn’t exactly been rolling in.
So, I thought I had better have a backup plan.
From this came an idea to create a project covering neuro diversity. Now, I have been diagnosed dyslexic for many years and more recently, I have been looking into whether I have either Autism or ADHD and am currently on a waiting list to be tested for ADHD (after going through several stages before I could even be tested).
I found coming up with ideas for horror films, easy and have far more than I could ever use. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for neuro diversity. I know that I didn’t want to do a traditional, how I defeated ND or how ND gave me superpowers. For every person who has been a success with a ND condition, there are many who have not been able to break out and who find life very hard.
Normally, on a project, I need a hook, which will lead me into the images. For Horror, it was film stills, where I imagined how I would create a still from the film. But I have been unable to find a hook for Neuro Diversity, so far.
So we come to now. I am currently on half term, from driving specials need children to school and I was meant to be starting to get my ideas on paper about which project I was going to do. How I was going to do the project, how I could make money from the project and what subjects I would do for the project.
Unfortunately, I haven’t done anything. The big stumbling block for my horror project is money. To create many of the images I want would take money, particularly if I wanted something like a wolfman (The curse of the Werewolf being a particular favourite), where creating prosthetics or a costume’s are not cheap.
But I need to move forward and this why I have written this blog post.
A blog post is often about what the person writing wants to tell you but in this case, it is about what I wanted to tell myself.
It has helped me clear my mind a little. Allowed me to strip back what I want to do. I have decided that I will go down the horror path, as slow as it may be.
Now, I have to start looking for a way of funding the project, know for sure what films I want to create images from. Work out how I will create those images, write it all down, draw out a still and work out a time frame to shoot it all. Then, I need to work out how to market the project, get an exhibition, work out how I want to display the images and how much to charge.
This does not mean, I won’t ever go down the path of the Neuro diversity project but I need to have a clear head for that and currently my head is full of monsters.
So whether nobody reads this post or not, it has been very useful to me and hopefully in a couple of years, you will see the final project in all its glory or should I say gory.